San Diego Startup Week 2014

Fab Lab presents a free event focusing on hardware innovation from 1:30-3:30 on Wednesday, June 18th. Join us in the Special Events Room on the 9th floor of the New Central Library, overlooking downtown.

Discuss San Diego’s future as an innovation and manufacturing hub, check out local hardware startups, and see a sampling of what is being made in San Diego.

Fab Lab San Diego is working with SD Startup Week to showcase local Makers and Hardware Innovators.

Panel Discussion

The role that product development is playing driving economic development nationally, a spotlight on hardware developers here in SD, and a bit about how San Diego is perfectly situated to benefit from distributed manufacturing and the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’.

Our panelists will include:

Travis Good

Make Magazine Contributing Editor

Travis Good focuses on the transformative potential of the maker movement in schools, libraries, science museums, and civic government. He is a regular speaker at conferences, contributing editor to MAKE Magazine and is co-chair of both MAKE’s Hardware Innovation Workshop and MakerCon. Recently he co-founded and produced San Diego’s first Maker Faire. In his maker journeys he has visited 28 start-up incubators, 95 makerspaces, and five fab labs while also chairing an incubator and co-founding Nova-Labs, a makerspace in Virginia. His broader agenda is available at http://make.GoodPursuits.com.

In a prior life Travis served for seven years as Vice President of Technology and Operations at AOL Latin America, during which he led the launch, operation, and scaling of AOL services in to five countries. Before that he held a variety of management positions at AOL, including Vice President of AOL International Business Development, Director of Client Software Product Marketing, and Director of Global Network Navigator. He led product management for AOL’s front-end software products and supervised three major upgrades in functionality as AOL expanded from 3 million to 25 million subscribers.

Josh Baylin

Velocity Growth

Josh is a former Bloomberg technology reporter and financial professional turned developer and serial entrepreneur. He is the founder of Velocity Kick, the first set of crowdfunding analytics tools aimed at improved audience and message management. Most recently, Josh led a financial data consulting and trading business, Visual Systems Research Group and VSRG Capital. Previously Josh worked as a portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors, LLC in Greenwich, Conn., managing technology investments. Prior to that, he held the role of Associate Analyst at Legg Mason Equity Research covering the wireless and technology sectors.

Xavier Leonard

City of San Diego Civic Innovation Lab

Xavier Leonard is the Public Technology and Data Strategist for the City of San Diego’s Civic Innovation Lab. The Civic Innovation Lab works with elected leaders, city departments, and external organizations to find innovative solutions to persistent problems associated with neighborhood design and civic engagement. Through various events, like the hackathon-styled Open City Project,teams are encourage to tackled urban problems with hardware or software.

Katie Rast

Executive Director of Fab Lab San Diego

Katie Rast is the Director of Fab Lab San Diego, and has worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop the San Diego instantiation of the Global Network of MIT Fab Labs. Since 2007, Katie has managed Fab Lab, a community-driven invention space, and has developed and deployed a suite of educational programs for youth and adults focused on innovation, ideation, creativity and STEM education.

Katie has been an evangelist for the Maker Movement for the past seven years, and remains dedicated to the belief that practices related to applied learning and invention benefit education, innovation, and economic development. Upon realizing the potential that came with the ability to “make almost anything”, Katie turned her interest in healthy communities and successful students toward the integration of ‘making’ into project-based learning, workforce development, and the creation of a local innovation ecology.

Prototypes and Pitches

A panel of local hardware start-ups will present their rapid-fire pitches followed by a quick Q&A session.

Showcase: A showcase of hardware made by local startups, as well as digitally-designed products and prototypes.

Parking

If you are at EvoNexus for lunch, it is a 1 mile walk or 10 min trolley ride on the Blue or Orange line to the library.Parking is free in the parking garage under the library for 2 hours with validation.There is also ‘Padres Park’ parking garage at 11th and J. This place generally has a day max rate of $6-10, but that can go up for games or special events.More parking options are listed here.

San Diego Startup Week is the region’s premier catalyst for innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism. On Wednesday June 18, the Hardware Innovation event is sandwiched between two other great events:

More on the Showcase Projects and others in development at Fab Lab:

The first tool free adjustable prosthetic for active lifestyles. On the day of our Startup Week event, Gladius will also be appearing at the White House to be presented by MIT and the Fab Lab Global Network!